The Hindu Business Line : Rly Board sanctions Rs 86 cr for Chittaranjan Loco Works

Chittaranjan (West Bengal), April 8 The Railway Board has sanctioned work at an estimated cost of Rs 86 crore for expanding the installed production capacity at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW), which is now gearing up to produce 220 electric locomotives during 2008-09 and 250 locos in 2009-10.

This is over and above the Rs 40 crore sanctioned for additional machines.

Addressing a news conference here today on the eve of the 53rd Railway Week celebrations, Mr V. Shankar, General Manager of CLW, said a consultant was being appointed shortly (tender to be finalised soon) to advise CLW regarding detailed design and specifications. Physical work on capacity augmentation is expected to begin in the second half of 2008 and set for completion by 2009-10.

CLW has also taken up a major ‘Open Platform Control’ project to eliminate dependence on the old vendor-specific operating system for designing and adopting systems conforming to published open standards. The GM said orders for hardware and software have already been placed and interaction with suppliers to finalise requirements was on.

Unveiling CLW’s Vision Plan to produce a lion’s share (close to 1,200 nos) of the anticipated domestic demand of 1,800 electric locos during the 11th Plan (2007-12), and also provide complete traction solutions at competitive and acceptable quality, Mr Shankar said CLW was now resorting to selective outsourcing in certain limited areas where the in-house capacity fell short of requirements. He said these are restricted to components and sub-assemblies where expertise is readily available with the industry.

According to him, the total value of outsourced items during 2007-08 was Rs 24 crore, which constituted a mere 1.6 per cent of total turnover of Rs 1,530 crore. CLW during 2007-08, also supplied maintenance spares worth Rs 120 crore to various sheds and workshops of Indian Railways which were undertaking maintenance of locomotives and wagons.

CLW, for 2008-09, has already identified more fabricated items for partially offloading, and the value is expected to be Rs 50 crore, some 2.6 per cent of the anticipated turnover of Rs 1,884 crore.

On the new types of locomotives under production, having achieved the targeted 200 locos during 2007-08 (riding on higher productivity of the large workforce), Mr Shankar said CLW is producing a 5,300 hp 25 kv 3-phase 4 axle broad gauge mainline electric locomotive for hauling passenger trains.